The present invention relates to an access point, and more particularly to an access point wherein the result of the detection of any failure of the radio access point, in other words, the failure of a radio access point diagnosis is notified to a specified portable access terminal.
Nowadays, regarding a radio communication system, the provision of a radio data communication service of large capacity based on an inexpensive fixed amount system has begun, and chances for performing radio communications have steadily increased. Besides, owing to the spread of such an inexpensive and highly valuable service, users who use portable access terminals represented by portable telephones are increasing more. In view of such a situation, enhancement in the stability of the radio communication system is one of very important problems. A manufacturer which provides the radio communication system endows the system with a redundant configuration or the like in order to enhance the stability of the service, and thus contrives so as not to stop the radio communication service, even in case of the occurrence of any failure.
For the purpose of attaining a further stability of the system in addition to such a contrivance, it is necessitated to build a system which can quickly cope with the case of the occurrence of the failure. The present-day system often has the redundant configuration as stated above, and even when any abnormality has occurred in one subsystem of the system, the system is changed-over to the other subsystem and is continued to operate, whereby the system does not lead to service shutdown. It is required, however, to resume the failing subsystem as promptly as possible and to return the system to an ordinary state. For this purpose, it is required to quickly obtain failure information.
There has been disclosed, for example, an access point diagnosis apparatus which decides whether or not the self-diagnosis of an access point is to be executed (refer to, for example, Patent Document 1). Also, there has been disclosed a test apparatus which performs an antenna failure test, a receiver failure test, etc. by employing an access terminal function unit included in an access point (refer to, for example, Patent Document 2).
Besides, there has been disclosed a method in a communication system as facilitates data transmission from a push service provider which subjects data to addressing by an Internet Protocol address, to a receiver which is specified within the communication system by a subscriber ID different from the IP address (refer to, for example, Patent Document 3).    [Patent Document 1] JP-A-2005-136811    [Patent Document 2] JP-A-2005-151189    [Patent Document 3] JP-T-2003-509920
The term “JP-T” as used herein means a published Japanese translation of a PCT patent application.